Normal in Bloomington
You wouldn’t think I’d be glad about getting up at 4 in the morning on a Saturday, sitting on buses for an ungodly number of hours, and slugging it out with a DVD player that won’t display elapsed time. But I am glad. Very glad.
At about 2:40, I peeked out from the little A/V booth to a sea of empty chairs. “Eh,” I said to David, “looks like about 30 people. If we’re lucky we hit 50.”
Five minutes later, lovely and accommodating librarian Karen Moen peeked through the door to announce gleefully “We’ve got 70!” And I’m guessing we ended at close to a hundred. Didn’t have to turn anybody away, which was lovely.
You guys will laugh, given my previous A/V tribulations, but despite the DVD player’s incapacities, this was the smoothest presentation I’ve ever managed. I only interrupted the talk with a misapplied un-mute button once. Go me.
Questions, as usual, were plentiful and excellent. We donated a copy of David’s book, which became a door prize as the library already owns it (and, I’m told, it’s checked out). I was personally quite tickled when it went to a man whose question to David showed that he knew a bit about language.
I also wish I’d gotten a picture of the very earnest young lady (ten years old, maybe?) copying down everything David had written on the whiteboard. Such people remind me of David, and I think the world could stand a few more like him.
It was a good time. Sorry y’all missed it; it’s been a long day and I don’t have the spare vocabulary to describe it properly.
Home tomorrow, after another ungodly number of bus-hours. Even so, there are many, many worse ways to spend a weekend.
ETA: Just got an email to let me know that the final count was (get this) 141! W-h-e-w. I would not have guessed. And the follow-up Pantagraph article is online, too.